


Hungry Eyes

by canox



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Cooking, F/M, Fluff, Gratuitous Smut, Kitchen Sex, Only Fun, Size Difference, they're thirsty AND hungry in this one, zero angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27424867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canox/pseuds/canox
Summary: Rey has a successful cooking channel and an appetite for bigger projects. Things heat up when her fans suggest she team up with Ben for a video and they realize they also want a taste of each other.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 31
Kudos: 144





	1. I look at you and I fantasize

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends. Did your jaw get as strong as a Vitamix blender this week and grind your teeth into a fine powder? Did your coffee get as weak as water and fail to revive your brain after five nights without sleep? It’s okay.*
> 
> Puree yourself something nice to sip, turn up the sweet sax solo in [this timeless classic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oKUTOLSeMM), and join me for some food-themed fluff.
> 
> *ty Stacey Abrams (and thousands of other people who did the work)

_u/ina4ever: What’s your favorite thing to cook?_

“If I’m doing a proper meal, a roast chicken. A little salt and pepper, some butter under the skin, bang a lemon in there if you have one, maybe some thyme, and you get this lovely smell while it’s cooking.

“If not, flapjacks. They’re basically oats with golden syrup that come out all squidgy in the middle and crisp at the edges. When I’ve had a really crap day, I’ll make a pan of them and eat them in front of the TV.”

_u/caitykat4893: When are you going to get a new cat?_

“When I stop tearing up every time I look at photos of kittens.”

_u/passit420: Have you ever done drugs?_

“I might have, on my own time. I’m definitely not going to do them in my videos, though.”

_u/throwaway00690069: What’s your boyfriend’s name?_

“What makes you assume I’d have a boyfriend?”

_u/Finn12345: Where do you get your earrings? They’re all so fun!_

“These little paring knives? My friend makes them. He’s super talented. I’ll put a link to his shop so you can check it out.”

_u/sohlastan1990: When are you going to do a cookbook?_

“When someone offers me a book deal! I have a few ideas, so if anyone in the publishing world is watching, please get in touch.”

_u/spoon_me_kylo: I’m a big fan of yours and I also love Cravings with Kylo. Would you ever make a video with him?_

“I don’t think I’ve seen any of his videos. But I’ve met and cooked with a lot of other YouTubers in real life, and it’s been really rewarding. And I’ve been looking for a fun way to celebrate getting to half a million subscribers.

“So, maybe! Anyway, thanks for all your questions, and if you enjoyed this, please come check out my channel.”

*

Her phone lit up the instant she shut the camera off.

 **Finn:** ty for answering my question

 **Rey:** finn12345? REALLY?  
could you be more obvious

 **Finn:** don’t worry about it  
christmas is coming and i need the promo  
check your email  
i can’t believe you haven’t seen any kylo videos

 **Rey:** i’m kind of busy

 **Finn:** i sent links to the best ones  
you’ll love them

 **Rey:** sure i will

 **Finn:** for a youtube star  
you’re extremely offline

The thing about working together was that you never knew what the other creator was going to be like—if they’d say something weird to you over email, unconcerned about corporate IT reading over their shoulder like they would be at a regular office, or if they’d later post videos that revealed them as flat-Earthers.

Frankly, sometimes even the videos with millions of views weren’t that interesting. Yes, Rey definitely wanted to cook with the high school chemistry teacher who made a steak dinner in her lab using the heat from reactions she stirred up; no, she was not interested in the man who was “hacking” sous-vide by steaming everything in plastic bags on his dishwasher’s pots-and-pans cycle, turning it all tepid and floppy. But if Kylo’s videos had Finn’s endorsement, she’d give them a shot.

She sat down with the microwaved remains of a brined turkey breast she’d been developing for a holiday video, now on its fourth test batch and somehow still too salty, her laptop, and Finn’s email, and clicked the first link.

It opened on a shot of the finished dish, plated and set on a tablecloth, with a simple voiceover backed by soft music. 

“So. Tonight I’m making ratatouille. It’s going to be a challenge, but when it’s made right, it’s worth the time.”

Good sound. Tightly edited script. And a basic but effective setup: just a single camera mounted at eye level above his hands, pointed at a countertop with a cutting board and ingredients laid out. It was intimate, even though he didn’t show his face. Like being in his head—she assumed it was a he, based on the bass timbre of his voice vibrating through her tinny laptop speakers—as he cooked.

She clicked through the other links from Finn with interest: a mix of weekend projects, like making your own sausage and ramen and three-tiered birthday cake, and late-night eats, like nachos and a cheeseburger he fried while drinking a beer.

The setup was always the same—voice, hands, cutting board—and the comments were the usual mix of sincere, if grating, questions and unnecessary feedback, though Kylo didn’t get as much criticism as she did. (Possibly because the resonant voice and the size of his hands and the height of the camera made him seem like a big guy, whereas she was definitely A Woman On The Internet and therefore fair game.)

_What can I swap for the ground pork in the sausage? I don’t eat meat._

_Hubby doesn’t like green peppers. What other colors of peppers are good?_

_I made the cheeseburger and added extra cheese. Way too much cheese._

Then there were—not the weirdos, but, say, the thirsty. The silly walking right up to the edge of creepy.

_I’d let him grind me into a patty with his grade-A beef._

_Just put that plastic-looking cheese over my mouth and smother me good._

_Can we talk about the size of Kylo’s hand compared to the beer can? I bet I’ve worked at places with walk-ins smaller than him. A MAN._

She rewound to the part of the video where he shuffled onions around the pan with one hand while lifting the can for a sip with the other. It did look pretty big. Then she rewound all the way to the beginning, dumped her now-rubbery leftovers in the compost, and cooked a cheeseburger along with the video, letting the grease drip down her chin as she ate.

*

When she watched the videos over dinner, she thought about how smooth the edits were, how instructive his tips, how he’d adjusted the lighting from one video to the next. How it could be fun to cook something together, and how she might even learn a few things on the production side.

When she closed her eyes in bed that night, she thought about him.

About his fingers curling under when he sliced tomatoes, keeping the tips safe. About the way you could just see his forearm tighten when he whisked an egg wash. About his palms flattening against his garlic press, pushing the handles together as easily as if he were squeezing toothpaste. About the flush of orange around his fingernails from the paprika-based rub he pressed into a rack of ribs. About the care he took soaping his thumbs after rolling meatballs.

It wasn’t really the size of his hands—although the way the soft sides of the beer can flexed in his grip was certainly interesting. It was what they were capable of.

The one she kept going back to was the veal piccata video, when he put on gloves to mix a marinade. Her mind circled around the way the latex snapped against the bone at his wrist, the way he flexed his fingers to stretch the material before plunging them into the bowl, the way he deftly massaged the mixture into the meat, working it gently but thoroughly.

And then there was his voice. Of course there was something inherently sensual about cooking. You had to put your body into it, and it was meant for your body to enjoy. When the recipe turned out, it satisfied every sense. When it didn’t, there was still the pleasure of nourishing yourself.

The way he spoke, though, hinted at another level of satisfaction. He must have known how it sounded when he said things like _What a beautiful strawberry. Look at you and your perfect shade of red_ or _I prefer this mallet because it really tenderizes the meat_.

Or maybe not; after nearly 200 videos, Rey still hated listening to her own voice. Watching herself on camera was fine, but she’d rather scrub the vent fan housing above her stove than hear herself (and had, in fact, done so to procrastinate).

Every time she drifted off, she heard another suggestion.

_I like to hold the thyme gently with one hand and strip the leaves with the thumb and first finger of my other hand._

That wasn’t quite true. Every time she drifted off, she _thought_ of something else she’d heard.

_Once I slide the onions into the pan, I’ll let them really sizzle. Be patient or you won’t get any nice caramelization._

There was nothing overtly sexual about it. Well, except for _You have to pound the meat good and hard so the marinade will really penetrate it_ , if your mind was in the gutter.

But no reason that her heart should have beaten faster or that she was suddenly too hot beneath her duvet.

No reason for her to feel something coil in her belly when she thought of him saying _I have a paper cut on my finger, so I’m wearing gloves. Otherwise the lemon juice in the marinade will sting. But you don’t have to. Unless you want to_. No reason for her to feel a pulse at her clit remembering the snap of the gloves as he tugged them on.

No reason at all.

*

“Out of stock,” Ben said as he crouched and scooted into the passenger seat, answering Mitaka’s anxious glance. “Anything online?”

Mitaka grimaced. “We can have it shipped from North Carolina, but it’ll take five days.”

“Shit. Okay.” Ben tapped at his phone, ignoring the barrage of email notifications to check his notes. “That’s every store on my list.”

“Back home? I’m double-parked here.”

“Fine.” Ben ran a hand over his face, more irritated with himself than his assistant. If he’d just finished his research and tested the recipe earlier, he wouldn’t be scrambling for purple sweet potato vinegar—the key ingredient in the French-Japanese-inspired potato salad he’d envisioned—the day he was supposed to film himself cooking with it.

He knew this. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. Somewhere between rolling out hundreds of wrappers for his soup-dumpling video and dutifully rapping the baking sheet only to have all his macarons collapse, he’d lost the energy to cook.

Every idea in his notebook was weeks old, and when he looked over past scribbles— _cotton candy with flavors of caramelized pork, new kind of cinnamon rolls, stuffed-crust pretzels w/mustard filling?_ —it only filled him with the urge to make another batch of neon-orange mac and cheese. In the microwave.

Mitaka dropped him off, leaving Ben alone in the kitchen with his lights and his camera and his cutting board. He took some potatoes out, scrubbed them, thought about peeling them, then looked at Twitter instead. Another food magazine was laying off staff. Probably just a matter of time before his own column got cut, and then he’d either have to hustle for another one or start taking video sponsors.

His inbox delivered more bad news: one request to turn some edits around by the next day, and another to send his spring recipe ideas (which at this point were nothing but “mac and cheese, but add frozen peas”) by the following week.

There was one intriguing email from the inquiries section of his website, asking cheerily if he’d be interested in making a video with someone called Rey who had a channel called Reycipes. This person had used as many exclamation points in a single message as Ben had used in his entire life.

He glanced at the tubers and the time, telling himself guiltily that maybe the potato salad would be one of his midnight cooking videos, and clicked the link to their channel.

“Tally-ho and spit spot and welcome to Cooking Challenge from the Comments number forty-five, which is to make a full roast beef dinner,” the host said in a voice somewhere between Mary Poppins and Julia Child, playing around. She laughed and continued at a lower pitch and fewer decibels, “I’m really excited about this one, because the sauce only calls for half a bottle of wine. I’m going to pour myself a glass while I tie up the beef and get it in the oven. Let’s have some fun!”

He fast-forwarded to the halfway point, which found her plucking leaves off thyme sprigs while chatting to the camera. Suddenly a timer went off and she almost spit out her mouthful of wine.

“Oh, fu—okay, that’ll be the fat heated up for my Yorkshire puddings, but I’ve completely forgotten to mix up the batter. So I’m just going to put a cut here—and now I’m back, this is seriously just flour, eggs, and milk I’ve whisked together, and I’m going to ladle it into the muffin tin with the beef drippings and put it back in the oven.”

Timing and technique were clearly not her strongest points. She’d nearly burned the puddings and neglected to show the viewer how to actually make the batter. But the video was still half an hour long because she was pulling the thyme off one tiny leaf at a time.

The comments were meaner and, astoundingly, even creepier than the ones on his videos. He thanked Past Ben yet again for using his old AIM screen name instead of his real name for his channel.

_THIS IS THE DUMBEST F*CKING THING I’VE EVER SEEN. Why wouldn’t you use cheesecloth to strain the gravy?_

Ben rolled his eyes at that one. She’d explained in the video that she found it easier to use a metal strainer, which he’d thought was a good compromise. Did people even watch before typing?

_My cooking challenge from the comments is, make me a sandwich!_

_That roast is COMPLETELY overdone. Why have a cooking channel when you don’t know anything about food? What a WASTE._

_Get me a red jacket and a funny hat cause I’d totally eat her beef._

_I bet her ass tastes like Yorkshire pudding._

Ben thought very briefly of how it had looked when she bent over to take the roast out of the oven. He chalked it up to the power of suggestion, nothing more, and watched a few more of her most popular uploads.

They were charming, like you were sitting in a friend’s kitchen and listening to them gossip as they banged pots and pans. But it would be a nightmare to shoot with her, waiting while she chopped and trying to keep her from burning herself. He couldn’t imagine smiling through an hour of her chatter. He’d never smiled for more than 30 seconds at a time. Maximum. 

The single video he’d made showing his own face had been dragged immediately to the trash can. Misery didn’t rule every moment of his existence, so why did the nerd onscreen look so grumpy the entire time? Plus, if he showed his face, there was no point in using a pseudonym anymore.

He typed a _Thanks, but no thanks_ response, but didn’t send it right away. Better to film first, then read it over and make sure it was at least a polite rejection.

*

At two a.m., potato salad finally assembled and in the fridge, Ben pulled off his clothes and fell into bed. Then he remembered he hadn’t sent that email. Another thing slipping through the cracks. He’d do it in the morning.

It made him think of her, though, as he fell asleep. She was a bit sloppy, in a way that he’d never allow himself to be on camera, but she still had a gleam in her eye when she seasoned the roast, patting the meat as she turned it to make sure it was evenly covered. 

She wasn’t living on food that came in seasoning packets. She still took pleasure in her cooking. He could tell when she took a little sniff of the lime before juicing it in her chips and salsa video, eyes briefly closing; when she firmly grasped a carrot and grinned to herself when she peeled it from end to end in one go. When she tasted the broth for her weeknight stewed chickpeas and poked her tongue out to chase the drop that landed on her chin.

What was troubling was when he kept thinking of her tongue when he woke up. There was nothing special about it. A shiny, pink, ordinary tongue. He stuck his own out to meet his toothbrush and looked at it in the bathroom mirror. It was basically the same.

There was nothing salacious about her tasting the broth. It wasn’t as if she rolled her tongue along her lip or ran it along her teeth, although now he was imagining her mouth doing both. There wasn’t even anything particularly appealing about the stewed chickpeas, which were far down the hearty end of the casserole-to-oysters spectrum of food sexiness. 

It was that she tried to lick it instead of just wiping her chin. Like she was hungry.

He took the potato salad out of the fridge along with the cream for his coffee and dumped it in the trash, disgusted with himself. Instead of opening the video files when he sat down at his computer, he opened the email and rewrote.

_Hi, Rey,_

_I’m Ben, the cook behind Cravings with Kylo. Nice to hear from you. It would be great to make a video together. Please email me with some suggested times and we can set up a call to discuss._

_Also, I can’t stop thinking about the shot of your tongue in the stewed chickpeas video, which is weird because I know you didn’t mean it to be sexy, but I hope I’ll get to see it in person when we shoot and possibly even feel it caressing my skin._

Now it was out and written down, and he could stop thinking about it. He deleted the last sentence, triple-checked that he’d excised the creepiness, and sent the message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cooking video: this chicken wing is just begging to be sauced  
> me, watching during quarantine: hmm, begging, v interesting
> 
> history podcast: so this period was really terrible, where rent just kept going up and everyone was basically tied down and fucked by their landlord  
> me, listening: tied down and fucked, you say?
> 
> f1 race: so-and-so is being pressured from behind  
> me, taking notes: yes boys
> 
> liiiiiikeeeee, let's calm down, GOD
> 
> also, obligatory link to the genius [All The Comments on Every Recipe Blog](https://the-toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-comment-recipe-blog/), RIP The-Toast.Net


	2. I feel the magic between you and I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bon appétit!

“Should I bring an apron for you?” Rey asked over the phone.

“Why?” She thought it was a nice gesture, but Ben’s voice— _that_ voice, resonating in her ear, saying words just for her, instead of a million anonymous watchers—sounded unimpressed.

“So we match. My friend does them in really fun colors that look great on camera. You can keep it after.”

“No. No, I’ve got my own aprons. I don’t want one from your friend.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said brightly. “I’m not sure she makes them in your size, anyway.”

“What?”

“Just—” She’d said that thinking of the size of his hands. Now she scrambled to think of a different explanation that didn’t involve commenters extrapolating the size of his dick from how his fingers measured up against a beer can. “The camera. The height makes you seem tall.”

He moved on, brisk and businesslike, the way he’d sounded in the email suggesting they have an hour-long phone call to discuss the logistics. “If you send me a detailed list of what you need, I can have my assistant get the ingredients.”

She made a note to ask him about that. How did you even find an assistant? How much did you have to pay them? She could use the help. Even just someone who would watch a timer or announce that they smelled burning. “That would be great.”

“What about equipment?”

“What about it?” It wasn’t like she was doing molecular gastronomy. She usually showed up to other people’s kitchens and improvised if she needed to. Once she’d prepped broccoli in front of the TV, balancing the cutting board and paring knife on her knees, because the other cook’s mom wanted to chat while she watched her stories.

“Are you okay to use mine?”

Using his equipment sounded like a proposition and she wanted nothing more than to accept. “Yes? I don’t think I need anything special.”

“Okay. That’s the cooking side. For the cameras, I’ll add another one, no problem, but you might have to come back and do the voiceover.”

“Why?” Now she was the bewildered one. “Wouldn’t I just talk to the camera?”

“Didn’t you watch any of my videos? I don’t show my face.”

So he thought they’d do everything his way? “My videos are based on me talking to my viewers. That’s how I make a connection with them. It’s not really a Reycipes video if they don’t see me.”

“And it’s not a Kylo video if they _do_ see me.”

“I think you should show your face. I can help you fix your hair or whatever.”

“Why?”

_Because your voice is hot_ , she thought. _And your hands. So the rest of you is probably hot, too_. “The point of doing a video together is that we’re collaborating, right?” she said. “So the viewers should see us making a connection.”

“I’ll have to change the whole setup. Figure out how to light our faces _and_ the food.”

“I can help you with that,” she offered. He was providing the kitchen and the cooking equipment and the filming equipment and the assistant-hours, so it seemed like the least she could do. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. We’re making a cooking video, not doing an assignment for film class.”

He scoffed. “That’s why your videos look the way they do, and mine look—”

“Better?” she supplied. “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

“Objectively, they do. Look better.”

“I’ll give you that. I’m saying it doesn’t matter. Viewers only care that you’re in focus. They’re not coming for your cinematography.” She wasn’t personally offended—she’d heard far worse from commenters who were apparently coming to her channel and torturing themselves of their own volition. They made different creative choices, that was all. Still, it was going to be hard to work together if they bickered the whole time.

“They’re coming for the whole package. The experience.”

“They’re coming because you’ve got big hands and a sexy voice,” she sputtered.

“They’re definitely not—” He didn’t even have an argument. Only wanted to get a word in edgewise.

She interrupted and plowed on. “Just like they’re coming to my channel because I smile a lot and act like I could be their girlfriend. But I’m not.”

“What?”

“I’m not anybody’s girlfriend. I mean, that’s not who I am off-camera,” Rey said firmly. “I’m not going to let you do whatever you want with—with this video. A collaboration means we work together.” 

What was wrong with her? Somehow she’d taken a professional phone call about making a cooking show and managed to work in the fact that she was single.

“I know what it means,” Ben said heatedly. “But I don’t want to compromise the quality. You can’t film on a phone in your bedroom. Viewers expect more.”

“They’re making feature films on phones these days,” she argued. “Anyway, that’s not what I’m trying to do. Why don’t we compromise by shooting from the chest down? That way you don’t have to show your face, but I can duck into frame and talk to camera if I want to.”

“And I can still add a voiceover when we edit. Fine,” he said. “The hour’s almost up. Send me that ingredients list.”

*

Rey didn’t send the ingredients list until the day before the shoot, forcing Ben and Mitaka to run around the city, dividing and conquering.

She didn’t come ready to shoot, either. She turned up with six coffees—“I wasn’t sure if your assistant would be here, and I didn’t know what you usually ordered so I brought two options for everyone”—and when she found out Mitaka wasn’t there, wanted to chat about where Ben had found him instead of getting down to fixing the lighting.

She was sublime in person, of course, with a warmth in real life that the camera didn’t always pick up and a dusting of freckles that it never got close enough to show. But he wasn’t sure what to make of the look she gave him when they shook hands, a frank, appraising glance that resolved into something like resignation.

An hour in, smoke was trickling from the oven, and Ben’s patience was already thin. Rey didn’t seem bothered by the near-total crispification of her potatoes—though she _had_ bridled when he told her poking them with a fork was absolutely not optional—and he kept catching her staring at the space just above his head.

“What are you looking at?” He was keyed up, sure, but not miserable. He was, however, probably making the face again like he was. Her stare made him uncomfortable, too. Like she could tell what he’d been thinking about, even though he definitely hadn’t sent it in his email.

She jumped. “What? Nothing.”

“Can you please focus on the cooking? We’re going to have to do another batch of potatoes if you don’t take those out,” he said sternly.

“Stop worrying. It’s all part of the process. It’s going to be fine,” she retorted.

*

Somehow the kitchen was too small for two of them to work. Every time he reached for a pot, he had to snake his arm past her hip; whenever he needed the salt, she already had it and wanted to helpfully shake a pinch into his palm.

“Sorry, need to grab that,” he said the first few times, trying to be polite.

“Can you tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll get it for you?” he said the next few times, watching her rifle through drawers.

“Why? I’m finding everything okay,” she replied.

“You’re putting everything back in the wrong place.”

“This is literally a drawer full of utensils. Nothing has a place.”

“They have a general organization.”

She sighed. “Okay. But could you please relax? If you’re tense we won’t be able to use any of the footage. We’re making a festive holiday dinner. It’s supposed to be fun.”

It would have been more fun if she hadn’t failed to secure the top on the blender in one of the shots for her carrot-ginger soup, spraying both of them and the camera with half-chunky orange glop. The problem wasn’t the cleanup; with two of them, it would take five minutes to wipe everything down. 

It wasn’t that he was jealous of the soup; he was astounded that out of a few ingredients and a process that looked like chaos, she’d conjured something that tasted earthy and sweet and rich, exactly like carrots but also like so much more, with the faintest bite of acid making it impossible for each mouthful to be the last one. (The secret ingredient, she’d confided eagerly when he asked, was buttermilk.)

It was that she’d licked her finger to clean it off, her pink tongue swiping at the soup as he’d both feared and fervently hoped, and he couldn’t stop thinking about or staring at her mouth in the hopes that it would happen again.

And she noticed.

“Do I have something on my chin?” she asked. “You keep looking at it like I’ve dribbled soup there.”

“No. No, you got it all.” Then he added, a little meanly, because she’d called him out, “Good thing you’re not showing your face, though. For the sake of continuity.”

“It’s humanizing when you make mistakes on video.”

*

Worst of all, though, was when the roast came out of the oven and Rey pulled 20 ingredients for the gravy, only five of which were actually called for in the recipe.

“I’ve chopped some extra garlic,” she explained cheerfully to the camera, “and I’m going to add a little mustard. Maybe even some horseradish, to give it a kick.”

Ben tried to be diplomatic while they were rolling. “I’ll grab those _extra_ ingredients while you stir the onions.”

“Do you have any Worcestershire sauce? I might like a dash of that, too,” she said, unbothered.

“Obviously we’ll write all of this down and include a recipe for you to follow along with,” he said pointedly.

“Don’t be afraid to improvise, though,” he heard her saying while he went to the fridge. “Recipes are great, but you can learn a lot by experimenting in the kitchen.”

He couldn’t let that stand. “But the best time to experiment is when you’re making something you’ve made before,” he called. “Not when you’re making a holiday dinner for the whole family or all your friends.”

He slapped the mustard, horseradish, and Worcestershire sauce on the counter and glared, out of sight of the camera. “Don’t you think?”

She stepped down from her box—there was no way they’d get both of them in frame from the chest down without help, not when he was built like a skyscraper and she like a cathedral—and grinned to the camera. “I think if your family and friends expect perfection, they can cook for themselves. The point is that you’re feeding the people you love.” 

Ben had to jump in. He wrested the wooden spoon from her, ordered his brain not to notice the way her warm fingers wrapped around the handle or how small they were compared to his own, and scraped at the pan. “This garlic’s going to burn while you talk.”

Rey looked at her hand for a second, like she couldn’t believe he’d dared to grab the spoon, then shook her head and recovered. “I’m just saying, go to a restaurant if you want food that turned out perfectly.”

“Lots of restaurants aren’t open on the holidays. When you’d be cooking this meal, in theory.”

She climbed back on the box to look him in the eye—almost. “Have you ever cooked something without a recipe?”

“How do you think recipes get developed in the first place?”

“Not to test recipes. Just to cook something for yourself.”

“You can find a recipe for anything on the internet. Why would you ignore that information?”

“I do it all the time. Who cares?”

“We’re getting off track here. Once you’ve got a nice color on the onions and garlic and you’ve added the herbs, you want to deglaze the pan.”

Rey waited a moment, then said, “Let’s cut for a second.”

“Okay.” Ben turned off the heat. “What’s up?”

She turned to him with her hands on her hips. “First of all, you’ve taken over my gravy. I’d like the spoon back, please.” 

He kept it. “No.” 

She glared.

“Continuity,” he explained. “I’ll give it back when we’re going again. Feel free to actually use it and not just wave it around while things burn.”

She scoffed. “Second, what’s the worst that will happen if this gravy doesn’t turn out?”

“We have to re-shoot and it fucks the schedule for the rest of the day. We can’t re-shoot and I have to fake a gravy from the mistake footage. We have to make up a recipe from scratch, test it, and then film ourselves cooking it.”

“Not the end of the world.”

“Not the end of your world, maybe. But a lot of work for me.” He rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to look at the way her mouth turned down as she scowled.

“Who says you’re going to do all the work? We’re in this together.”

“Seriously? I organized the meeting, I got the ingredients together, I offered the use of my kitchen and my setup—”

“And I’m bringing all the ideas and all the fun, apparently.”

That hurt a little. Like she knew what he’d been thinking _and_ she knew he’d been subsisting on boxed mac and cheese for more than a week.

“I have ideas, too,” he insisted, hearing the petulance as it came out. “Following recipes doesn’t mean you lack originality. I’m more than a pair of big hands and a sexy voice, as you so nicely put it. The problem is that you’re—”

“Shut up.” It looked like she was blushing. But why?

“—you’re so unorganized. How do you know if changing the technique or an ingredient worked if you never make the same thing twice? Yes, you have some brilliant ideas, but you’re _unbelievably_ sloppy about cooking them.”

“Please stop talking.” She stepped off the box and moved closer to him, giving him that same frank look that assessed his big ears, his big nose, the moles on his face, even though she was biting her lip like she wasn’t sure of what she was going to say next.

He could see her freckles again and he felt dizzy. Was there a gas leak? Probably not. He’d had the cooktop serviced this year, the flame was off, and you were supposed to smell gas. Weren’t you?

She stepped even closer and he leaned back, not exactly wary but conscious of his size next to her. “This isn’t really going the way I wanted it to. Is this how you thought it would go?”

“Not really,” he admitted.

“So I want to try something,” she continued. “Something that doesn’t involve cooking. Or arguing. Or talking at all.”

“Okay,” he said uncertainly.

“Something...sloppy.” She tilted her face to look up at him, waiting to see if he got it. After a beat, she widened her eyes and licked her lips.

His thoughts abandoned their stations; his control center descended into a chaos of _Hold up, boys—is she? Are we—? Here? She said sloppy. She licked her lips. Does that mean—? That means tongue, bro. Yeah, man! Tongue! Did everybody get that?_ and then seized on that hope like a mantra. _Tongue, man. Tongue. Tongue. Tongue._

“Okay,” he repeated weakly. He would have agreed to anything. What had he done to deserve this? Argued with her in what she called—hang on, maybe what she _thought of_ as—his sexy voice?

When he thought about it later, he wasn’t sure if he’d been hard since he grabbed the spoon and touched her fingers, or if he got hard the instant she knelt on his anti-fatigue mat, pushed his apron aside, and reached for his belt. Either way, when she tugged his pants and briefs over his hips, his cock sprang toward her face, and she gasped in the most gratifying moment of his life.

Except for right after, when she started with her tongue, teasing little licks around the head that made him grab the counter so he wouldn’t accidentally thrust and poke her in the eye. He grabbed the edge of the cooktop instead and hissed when one palm made contact with the still-hot metal ridge.

Rey leaned back, looking surprised. “No good? I’ll stop.”

“I burned myself,” he choked out. “Please, uh, keep going.”

She nodded. She ran his cock over her lips, smearing the fluid that leaked from the tip across them, then licked it off. She opened her mouth and took him slowly, letting the head drag at the back of her throat. He could hear her breathing hard through her nose when he stopped moaning and listened.

She let him pop out of her mouth and stroked him, fingers stretched and so much smaller than his own fist, while nosing at his balls.

“When I thought about this,” she said, which his brain took as a cue to melt like a plastic spatula in a hot pan, “I imagined you narrating it like one of your videos. Telling me how you have to be careful not to squirt too much icing on top of your breakfast buns.

“But it turns out,” she continued, rubbing his cock against her cheek, “that I like you better when you’re quiet.”

Her focus made him feel ashamed for criticizing her. Maybe she neglected her Yorkshire puddings or forgot her potatoes, but her attention to his cock was total. Bordering on devotion, even, the way she shoved it against the back of her throat and let spit trail from her mouth onto his skin and down her chin while she molded her tongue against the underside.

It was both unbelievably sloppy and unbelievably good.

Which made him almost sorry to tell her he was getting close. He wanted so badly to come, but also to keep hearing her desperate little near-choking noises and feeling this dizzy, nearly out-of-body pleasure forever.

“Come in my mouth,” she said.

“Are you sure?” There must have been a gas leak, and either he was hallucinating that this gorgeous woman wanted to swallow or he was already dead and this was heaven.

“I want to taste you.”

Her mouth and her hand, sliding wet and warm around him, would have finished him in the time it took to brown nuts in the oven. But what made his orgasm boil up and overflow, bubbling white-hot up his spine, was the look in her eyes when she opened her lips for him again. That hungry look.

“Sorry,” he said, awkwardly stroking her hair when he was done panting _oh fuck, Rey_ and _don’t stop_ and _please_. “I’ve been eating a lot of mac and cheese lately. You’re supposed to eat fruits and vegetables.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She poked her tongue out to clean the corners of her mouth. Like it was the most natural thing for his come to be on her lips and not a mind-boggling stroke of luck that he would replay in the shower the next day and every morning after. She stood up and smiled at him, looking—and this was the truly incredible part—satisfied. “The flavor isn’t really the point here.”

*

If Rey had been stricter about doing kegels, she wouldn’t have read the email while sitting on the toilet. But as with so many things, she’d gotten lax, so there she was, playing on her phone while trying to squeeze out the last of Ben’s come from the night before, when the notification popped up.

An actual editor, who worked at an actual publisher and made actual cookbooks, wanted her and Ben to write one.

_I recently saw the holiday dinner gone wrong video you made together that went viral, and, to be honest, I laughed until I cried. The script felt so natural—so many great burns! It was like you’d been cooking together and bickering for years._

_There’s something so magnetic about your chemistry, where even though you’re clearly repelled by each other, the viewer gets the sense that you could be attracted, too. Sorry if this is overstepping or I’m reading too much into it._

And then the editor suggested they all have a phone call to discuss, as though this was a project that could really happen.

Rey gasped. It was possibly the most exciting moment of her life so far, and instead of jumping for joy she was unrolling toilet paper.

Ben was cracking eggs into a bowl—never directly into the pan, in case one was bad or a piece of shell snuck in—when she tiptoed into the kitchen. He glanced at her, then at the phone in her hand, and smiled. “Did you already see the email?”

She could either be embarrassed about reading her email on the toilet or focus on the good news. “Exciting, right? I have a couple ideas in a notebook somewhere that I think could be really fun.”

“Better start looking for it now,” he said dryly. “I might go ahead and write a book without you.”

Rey sliced bread and slammed the toaster lever down, a little piqued. She hadn’t really considered that he might not want to commit to working with her on an entire cookbook after one viral video and two months of hooking up. It would take months of cooking and testing and writing and editing. But what if this was her only chance at doing one? “You wouldn’t,” she said.

He flipped the eggs. “Probably not. Is that toast almost done?”

She sniffed. “Thirty seconds to toast, thirty seconds to butter.”

“I’ll let the eggs firm up. Look at us, cooking together.” He slid the butter along the counter and touched her hand as he passed her a knife. “I was just teasing about the notebook.”

“I know,” she said, snatching the toast as it popped up. “You wouldn’t write a cookbook without me.”

“Couldn’t, in fact,” he told her seriously. “Unless it was just one recipe for boiling macaroni.”

“That reminds me,” she said. “Would you eat a gravy éclair? I had a dream about it the other night. It’s like a regular éclair, but it has kind of a savory creamy gravy inside instead of a cream filling.”

“We can play around with fillings after breakfast,” he said, balancing plates on one hand and pulling her toward the table with the other.

“Oh, shut up,” she said, dragging her feet. “I know what kind of filling you’re thinking about.”

Ben grinned. “We’ll see. Let’s eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag yourself; I’m on Team Use a Goddamn Recipe So You Can Remake It Later with Ben
> 
> Also, pro tip, nuts brown, like, the second you look away.


End file.
